Sign up to subscribe

World Markets

Russia has suffered a savage cut of one-third in its 2010 grain production, expected to be down to 65 million tonnes from a forecast 95 million tonnes. Wheat is down 27% to 45 million tonnes, most of which will now be required at home for human and livestock consumption.

Like a whirling dervish at Baba al Shams desert restaurant, outside Dubai, the Middle East market for dairy products never stands still.
Occasionally it might pause to re-gather momentum, but surges off again, in times of plenty and of disruption, in war and in peace.
The global financial crisis might have left giant holes in the ground and untenanted skyscrapers littering Dubai, but the Middle East's appetite for dairy products is undiminished.

Angus cattle enthusiasts have “out-commercialised” their Hereford brothers and convinced much of the big beef industry in the United States to go black, believes 6666 Ranch ambassador “Boots” O'Neal. He told a group of visiting international journalists on a tour of West Texas that his historic ranch of 40,000ha was pure Hereford until the mid 1990s, when the manager ordered a breeding switch to Angus.

A plant breeder who some have called the most positively influential man of the 20th Century has died in Dallas, Texas.
Dr Norman Borlaug, born on an Iowa farm in 1914, developed high-yielding,
short-strawed wheats in Mexican research stations which created the Green Revolution.